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Explanatory and Investigative Journalism in IowaWed, 30 Oct 2019 16:35:28 +0000en-US
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1State Public Safety Department Vehicles Lacked Secure Devices To Store Weapons: Gun Stolen From Vehicle in 2018https://www.iowawatch.org/2019/10/11/state-public-safety-department-making-sure-vehicles-have-secure-devices-to-store-weapons/
https://www.iowawatch.org/2019/10/11/state-public-safety-department-making-sure-vehicles-have-secure-devices-to-store-weapons/#respondFri, 11 Oct 2019 05:02:02 +0000http://www.iowawatch.org/?p=322537Fewer than half of the vehicles from the Iowa Department of Public Safety’s two largest law enforcement divisions were equipped to give officers the option of locking up weapons in those vehicles with designated equipment such as locking rifle racks or handgun vaults as recently as May 2019, an IowaWatch investigation revealed.

Vehicles purchased since 2017 have locking devices to secure firearms beyond locking a vehicle’s door or trunk. The Department of Public Safety declined for safety reasons to provide updated numbers of vehicles with the capability.

“Information regarding security and storage of weapons is a significant officer safety concern,” Catherine Lucas, general counsel of the Iowa Department of Public Safety wrote to IowaWatch in a response to a public records request in late September.

Adam DeCamp, Division of Criminal Investigation special agent in charge, said a vehicle is secure when its doors are locked.

Internal firearm policy directives for the Department of Public Safety obtained by IowaWatch did not show any policy for the safe storage of handguns in an unattended vehicle. DeCamp said the Division of Criminal Investigation does not have a policy prohibiting leaving weapons unattended in a vehicle when they are not in a vault or locking rifle rack.

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Lt. Rick Pierce, Iowa State Patrol fleet and supply commander, said in May the entire fleet was projected to have the locking rifle racks within the next one to one-and-a-half years. The Department of Public Safety has declined to say if the timeline has changed.

A handgun was stolen from a Division of Criminal Investigation vehicle in 2018, the IowaWatch investigation revealed.

A 2017 study conducted by public health experts from Harvard and Northeastern University found gun owners who stored guns in their cars were more than twice as likely to experience theft than gun owners who did not.

A law was passed in California in 2016 requiring a firearm left in any vehicle, including those owned by civilians, to be secured in a locked container and out of plain view, or in the trunk. The law was a response to gun thefts from police vehicles where the weapons were eventually used in crimes. A similar law does not exist in Iowa for law enforcement officers.

Pierce said approximately 150 Iowa State Patrol vehicles had locking rifle racks in May 2019.

The Patrol began installing locking rifle racks in its vehicles in 2017, Pierce said.

DeCamp said 12 of the 142 Division of Criminal Investigation vehicles were outfitted with handgun vaults for gun storage in vehicles for people in the agency as of May 2019. Installation of the vaults began in newly purchased vehicles in 2017.

However, equipment updates are not made retroactively.

“We institute something new in the field like, say, the rifle racks that we’re putting in our cars, we don’t go back and retrofit all the other cars,” Pierce said. “We usually run about a three-and-a-half year cycle on rotation.”

DCI CAR BROKEN INTO, GUN AND POLYGRAPH STOLEN

Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Laura Meyers’ vehicle was broken into in St. Louis on March 25, 2018. Her loaded, agency-issued Glock 23 semi-automatic pistol was stolen from her vehicle, along with a polygraph machine and personal items, after the window was broken, DeCamp said. Records he gave IowaWatch confirm this information.

“Her weapon was in a secured vehicle, it was not laying out in plain sight,” DeCamp said. “The vehicle was burglarized and it was taken.”

DeCamp said the gun was not secured in a vault or other form of locking mechanism inside the locked vehicle.

Meyers stopped in St. Louis on her way back from a 20-week polygraph training session in Florida. DeCamp said the weapon stolen from Meyer’s vehicle has since been recovered, although department officials declined to confirm that in follow-up correspondence with IowaWatch. DeCamp said he could not comment on where the weapon was recovered or if it had been used in any crimes, as it is part of an ongoing federal investigation of a burglary ring.

Meyers is still a special agent with the Division of Criminal Investigation, Lucas confirmed in late September. Meyers did not violate department policies, DeCamp said.

The vehicle in the incident was a model year 2014 and had not been outfitted with a vault.

Jim Wittenwyler, director of the administrative services division of the Iowa Department of Public Safety, requested on June 25, 2018, that the Executive Council of Iowa approve spending $5,310.94 to repair a window and replace the stolen polygraph machine.

According to the minutes of the Executive Council meeting, the request was to “cover repair costs.” Pierce confirmed that it was for the stolen polygraph machine, which has never been recovered, and the broken window. DeCamp said funds to replace the gun were not sought because the department had replacements.

The request was reviewed and recommended for approval by the state auditor’s office, then approved by the council.

The incident was not disclosed to the public at the time but was reported to St. Louis Metropolitan Police. St. Louis Metropolitan Police told IowaWatch a record of the incident did not exist, but DeCamp later gave IowaWatch an incident report.

The Department of Public Safety does not have a system or policy for reporting to the public when weapons thefts take place, department Lt. Nathan Ludwig said. “I don’t know if we actually put it out there,” Ludwig said. “We just treat everything as a public record or a FOIA (freedom of information act) if people were to inquire about it.”

Ludwig was a sergeant and the public information officer for the Department of Public Safety at the time of an early interview for this story in April.

This story also was published by the Oskaloosa Herald, Iowa Public Radio website and Centerville Daily Ioweigan under IowaWatch’s mission of sharing stories with media partners.

]]>https://www.iowawatch.org/2019/10/11/state-public-safety-department-making-sure-vehicles-have-secure-devices-to-store-weapons/feed/0Deer Collisions, Hail Help Drive Up Cost To Repair Iowa’s Public Safety Vehicles in 2018https://www.iowawatch.org/2019/10/11/deer-collisions-hail-help-drive-up-cost-to-repair-iowas-public-safety-vehicles-in-2018/
https://www.iowawatch.org/2019/10/11/deer-collisions-hail-help-drive-up-cost-to-repair-iowas-public-safety-vehicles-in-2018/#respondFri, 11 Oct 2019 05:01:54 +0000http://www.iowawatch.org/?p=322543Iowa Department of Public Safety vehicles sustained a five-year high of $849,878 worth of damage in 220 incidents in 2018, department officials said.

Although only six more incidents were reported in 2018 than in 2017, the total damage reported in 2017 was worth $519,429 — $330,449 less than in 2018. The total damage for the two years combined cost $1.37 million.

Lt. Rick Pierce, commander of Iowa State Patrol Fleet and Supply, said the cost of repairs may sound like a lot, but the Department of Public Safety has approximately 650 vehicles.

The most common cause of damage was “act of nature damage,” including at least 59 accidents involving deer reported in both 2017 and 2018, funding requests sent to the Executive Council of Iowa reveal. Hail was the second most common with 36 accidents reported to the council in the same time span, records examined by IowaWatch showed.

Pierce did not provide a specific explanation for why the cost was significantly higher in 2018, but said reasons could be an increase in pursuits, hail damage or deer populations in a given year.

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Pierce said the agency does all it can to minimize the public’s net cost, including selling old equipment and salvaging usable materials from cars taken out of operation.

“We really seek to try to build the safest cars, and at the same time, be as responsible as we can with the taxpayers’ funds — we really do try to save everything we can,” he said.

Another factor in the cost of the damages is beyond the cause or the vehicle, but in where repairs are done. Although the Department of Public Safety owns a more than 3,000-square-feet shop in Des Moines, no repairs are done in the facility, Pierce said. The shop is for storage, salvage and installation of equipment, he said.

All repairs to the vehicles are done by private businesses approved by the state as vendors, often by dealerships. Repairs are done as quickly as possible, Pierce said, with Fleet and Supply approving them.

More than $500,000 of the repair costs were reimbursed by the state for 2017 and 2018 via the Executive Council of Iowa, which reimburses costs when damage is a result of vandalism, theft or an act of nature that results in at least $2,000 of damage.

Insurance paid for most of the repair costs. The state seeks reimbursement from the other driver in vehicle collisions in which that motorist is found liable. State insurance pays when a Department of Public Safety official is found liable.

Jim Wittenwyler, director of the administrative services division of the Department of Public Safety, submits a request to the council for reimbursement if the damage is more than $2,000 and falls within categories that qualify for Executive Council reimbursement.

While the public does not foot all of the bill for damage, reimbursement from the state comes from a fund that is mainly tax dollars. The state’s self-insurance for the Department of Public Safety is paid for from the state general fund that is 94 percent personal tax dollars and 6 percent from corporate income taxes.

An Iowa State Patrol car outside the Lucas Building in Des Moines on June 26, 2019.

MAKE OF THE CAR AFFECTS DAMAGE COSTS

Nine of every 10 Iowa State Patrol vehicles are Dodge Chargers, which cost more than $23,000 apiece and are equipped with thousands of dollars of hardware to make it fit for service, Pierce said. Dodge Chargers are a sedan-style car that ride low to the ground, making them susceptible to damage.

“The thing with the Dodge Charger, it runs low in the front end,” Pierce said. “If you sneeze on the front end of a Dodge Charger, you’ll cause at least $1,500 of damage.”

Pierce said he likes the Dodge Charger and it’s a good car, but incidents like accidents involving raccoons cost more than when the now-discontinued Ford Crown Victoria was the Patrol’s vehicle of choice. This is evident in a $3,005 repair for an accident involving a raccoon on Jan. 30, 2017, an Executive Council of Iowa document showed.

The vehicle’s low profile can lead to protective skid plates being ripped from the undercarriage of the vehicles when crossing medians and other common issues, Pierce said.

How much more damage reported in recent years than when the Ford Crown Victoria was still in use by Iowa State Patrol was not evident in available records. Records were not computerized before 2014, Pierce said.

More incidents were reported in 2017 and 2018, plus the average cost per incident was $1,101 higher than it was in the two-year period of 2014 and 2015, an analysis of information Pierce provided showed.

While the cost of vehicles increases over time, the annual average for total damages was $684,500 for 2017 and 2018, which is $289,238 higher than the average annual cost in 2014 and 2015, the analysis showed.

“My husband carries a photo of me in his wallet tucked behind credit cards, his driver’s license and carefully folded bills,” reporter Andy Kopsa begins her story about sex offender registries, published April 4 at IowaWatch.org.

“I ask him to give it to me as we stand in the reception area of the jail in Tama County, Iowa, in December 2015. He looks ready to ask: Why? Then, he silently pulls it from his wallet.”

What follows is a story about trust — and mistrust — as Kopsa, writing from the Investigative Reporting Workshop, leaves you questioning the effectiveness of sex offender registries. Her story was the most-read 2018 story at IowaWatch.org and an example of the collaborative work IowaWatch does with other nonprofit news organizations.

The most-read IowaWatch stories covered a variety of topics: the environment, mental, cultural diversity and agriculture. Here they are:

Nine of every 10 public school districts in Iowa have buildings within 2,000 feet of a farm field, making students and teachers susceptible to being exposed to pesticides that drift from the fields when pesticides are sprayed. Yet many school officials interviewed for an IowaWatch/Tiger Hi-Line investigation showed little to no awareness on if or how pesticide drift could affect the staff and students in school buildings.

March 28, 2018
By Cindy Hadish

A car crash that left her son with shattered hips, a broken foot, arm and jaw, and internal injuries requiring multiple surgical procedures was a telling point for Kristin Ertzinger. Emergency personnel and hospital staff worked diligently to save her son’s life, but in the years leading up to that crash, and the aftermath, Ertzinger and her son experienced a different story with Iowa’s mental health system.

Sept. 16, 2018
By Molly Hunter

Small family-run farms that raise organically, without genetically modifying crops or by reducing their use of pesticides and antibiotics, are such a small part of the U.S. government’s definition of a family farm that they often are lost in the crowd when it comes to government and industry support. Some of these non-conventional farms lack enough support to obtain some federal farm subsidies that go to larger farms, but also professional network opportunities to grow their business, an IowaWatch investigation revealed.

The percentage of University of Iowa students who are African-American or Latino is growing but students say more still could be done.

Jan. 29, 2018
By Lauren Wade and Maria Curi

A Hechinger Report study showed many flagship universities across the country have low enrollment of African-American and Latino students, yet the University of Iowa showed a slight rise in first-time degree-seeking students from those minority populations. Despite the increase, minority students IowaWatch interviewed said the U of I could do more to cultivate a culture of diversity and create a safer learning environment for African-American and Latino students on campus.

IowaWatch and KCRG-TV9 co-hosted an Iowa City public forum on this topic on May 2

April 19, 2018
By Temesha Derby, Britteny Johnson and Laura Wiersema

Despite faculty and staff efforts to educate students about sexual assault prevention and reporting, colleges and universities in Iowa struggle to measure how effective these initiatives are on their campuses. One reason: The inability to decipher whether or not more sexual assaults and harassments are being reported because of increased knowledge of reporting procedures or because more of these instances are happening on campus.

Thanks to support from our readers, IowaWatch continues to produce high-quality journalism like the pieces listed above and is training the next generation of journalists to do this work at a high, ethical level.

The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan, investigative news service that does investigative and community affairs journalism in collaboration with other media and trains college student journalists.

]]>https://www.iowawatch.org/2018/12/26/sex-registry-failures-pesticide-drift-concerns-mental-health-care-top-readers-interest-at-iowawatch-in-2018/feed/0What Happens When A Driver Kills Someone While Fiddling With A Cellphone? Often, Not Muchhttps://www.iowawatch.org/2018/02/06/what-happens-when-a-driver-kills-someone-while-fiddling-with-a-cellphone-often-not-much/
https://www.iowawatch.org/2018/02/06/what-happens-when-a-driver-kills-someone-while-fiddling-with-a-cellphone-often-not-much/#respondTue, 06 Feb 2018 19:31:40 +0000http://www.iowawatch.org/?p=132087The victims include a Bible college student in Iowa who was bicycling home from work, a 13-year-old Michigan boy riding in his older sister’s car and a Minnesota school bus driver picking up the morning newspaper in front of his home.

This is a story from Fairwarning.org/. For more reporting go to its website.

All were killed in recent years by distracted drivers who had been texting or looking at their GPS. Yet none of the drivers responsible for those deaths spent more than a few days behind bars.

Although there are no national statistics on the results of prosecutions brought against distracted drivers who kill or severely injure someone, light punishment appears to be the norm. An informal review by FairWarning of prosecutions of distracted drivers — cases gleaned from news reports over the last five years that involved more than 100 deaths overall –- found that few were sentenced to serve for more than a month or two, or given fines of more than $1,000.

Photo provided by FairWarning

Megan Goeltz was killed in February 2016 at the age of 22 when another driver slammed into her car at a highway intersection in eastern Minnesota. Authorities said the other driver, Drew Fleming, had been texting when the crash occurred. Fleming was charged with a misdemeanor reckless driving charge and still is awaiting trial.

To combat distracted driving deaths, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last May published a 24-page guide outlining the best methods to win convictions. It was prepared by a team of eight prosecutors, police officers and traffic safety specialists from across the nation.

“Sending or reading a text message can take the driver’s eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds,” the publication said. “At 55 miles per hour …. the vehicle will travel the length of a football field without any visual guidance.”

Safety advocates and researchers say tougher penalties alone aren’t likely to get drivers to put down their phones. But as with drunk driving a generation ago, they say, stiffer penalties could reduce the reckless behavior, if the tougher punishment is combined with education programs, peer pressure and technology that can disable motorists’ wireless devices while they are driving.

For example, Christopher Kutz, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor, thinks that ”very well-publicized homicide prosecutions” could have a strong deterrent effect. Yet he also believes that technology to prevent drivers from using their smartphones or other devices is essential. “There’s a particular problem with distracted driving — the design of the device is to encourage distraction,” he said. “They’re built with addiction as a feature, not a bug.”

“Part of the challenge,” said Jay Winsten, associate dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, “is that there is no stigma connected or associated with a distracted driving offense. There’s no shame.”

He added: “I’m at a reception or cocktail party and someone asks, what are you working on and I say distracted driving and they’re more likely than not to say, ‘Yeah, I’m probably one of the worst offenders.’”

Public attitudes tended to be similarly blasé toward drunk driving until the 1980s. “People would joke about how drunk they were when driving,” Winsten recalled. But then the newly formed Mothers Against Drunk Driving stepped in and drew widespread attention to the deadly problem. By swaying public opinion, MADD helped win tougher legal sanctions, higher drinking ages in some states and highlighted such alternatives as designated drivers.

FairWarning would like your thoughts on how to address the problem of distracted driving. Click here to share your views.

Nearly one-third of drivers between the ages of 18 and 64 read or send text or email messages while at the wheel, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Distracted driving causes almost 3,500 deaths and 400,000 injuries a year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says. In 2015, the agency estimated that nearly 500 deaths involved the use of cellphones, but experts consider that figure very low since the federal database relies on often incomplete information in police reports. Along with using wireless devices, other distractions – such as eating while driving — also figure in some of these crashes.

“This is so prevalent and so very dangerous,” said Amy J. Freedheim, a prosecutor in Seattle for King County, Wash., who co-authored the NHTSA prosecution guide. “We’ve got to address it — we can’t afford not to.”

“All it takes is just a moment of drift and you’ve altered your life and you’ve ended somebody else’s life.”

IOWA ANGLE

Making driving and using a hand-held communication device illegally a primary offense, so that law enforcement can arrest you at any time instead of, as previously was the case, during a traffic stop for something else or an accident.

Changing the wording in what is regulated from reading a text to simply viewing an electronic message, including images in addition to words.

Prohibiting playing, browsing or accessing electronic messages.

The fine is $30.

— IowaWatch

The NHTSA guide encourages police to consider using specialized evidence bags for cellphones to preserve their data and reduce the chance that the information would be lost due to outside interference or static electricity.

It also advises police to demand electronic records from wireless providers, who typically won’t release them without a subpoena, and get statements from witnesses and the suspect driver. “The early interview may reduce the opportunity to fabricate or conspire with others,” the manual noted.

Yet no matter how thorough the criminal investigation, experts say that distracted driving is a far tougher nut to crack than drunk driving — and not just because it is more difficult to prove a motorist was texting at the moment of a crash than to demonstrate, with the black-and-white results of a field sobriety test and breathalyzer or blood test, that a driver was intoxicated. Only in the rare case of an eyewitness report or admission by a motorist will police know that a cellphone was involved.

For one thing, more people use wireless devices day-in and day-out, often minute-by-minute. Tweeting, texting and posting are hard habits to break — even for someone in the driver seat.

Photo illustration by Danielle Wilde/IowaWatch

Photo illustration: Iowa’s first law banning texting while driving failed to reduce road crashes, and officers seldom enforce it because of legal restrictions, a 2014 IowaWatch investigation showed.

Winning tougher sanctions also requires some legislators, litigators, judges and juries to ignore their own behavior. As Harvard’s Winsten put it: “There but for the grace of God go I – am I really prepared to send someone to jail?”

Most people “are getting the message that texting and driving is injurious,” she said. “But everybody thinks they are the safe person.”

In a particularly horrific case, manslaughter and other charges are pending against Jack Dillon Young, 21. Police say hewas texting and on prescription drugs last March 29 when he drove his pickup truck across the center line of a rural road in South Texas and smashed into a church bus, killing 13 people. He has pleaded not guilty.

Most prosecutions that lead to prison sentences, the FairWarning review showed, involved at least one additional illegal act. Those included drinking, drug-taking or the use of a hand-held phone while driving a commercial truck, a practice outlawed by federal transportation authorities.

Perhaps the stiffest sentence in recent years was meted out to Frank Rychtik. The Wisconsin dump truck driver pleaded no contest to killing Minnesota motorist Jason Songer, 29, and seriously injuring two others in 2014. He is serving 16 years in prison.

Rychtik had been drinking the previous evening and his blood alcohol level remained above .04 when he slammed into several vehicles that had come to a halt ahead of him on Interstate 90 near La Crosse, Wis. At the time, he acknowledged, he was looking down at a Facebook post and failed to notice the stoppage.

“Life can change in that second it takes you to look at your phone,” he reflected in a prison interview with Fox 9 News in Minneapolis early last year.

“I just wish I could go back and re-wake up that morning and not get into that truck,” he said. “That text message, that Facebook post, all of that can wait.”

In New Jersey in 2013, a high school sports star, Sam Oltmans, received a five-year prison sentence in connection with a crash that killed a 61-year-old political activist named Lauren O’Neil.

Authorities said Sam Oltmans, who was 17 at the time of the crash, was at a party before driving off. They said Oltmans later crossed a double yellow line and struck O’Neil’s vehicle head-on while he was talking on his cellphone and sending text messages.

In sentencing the teen, according to local news reports, Superior Court Judge Robert Reed called the case a tragedy and indicated that he hoped the tough sentence would serve as a warning to others.

Today, Oltmans is out of prison and is attending Rutgers University, where he plays on the lacrosse team. He also speaks to school groups about drinking, texting and driving.

“My message to you: Be responsible,” he was quoted as telling students at Quinnipiac College. “Don’t make the same mistakes that I did. They’ll stay with you for the rest of your life.”

A case more typical of those reviewed by FairWarning is the one against Drew Fleming of Hudson, Wis. Authorities said Fleming was texting while driving through an eastern Minnesota highway intersection in February 2016 when he lost control of his Saab, careened off an embankment and slammed into Megan Goeltz’s Ford Fusion. Goeltz, who was 22, pregnant and the mother of a toddler, was killed.

But Fleming, then 20, was charged with a misdemeanor reckless driving charge. Still awaiting trial, he faces a maximum sentence of a year in jail.

Forty-three states and Washington, D.C., have text messaging bans for all drivers, and 15 states and the District of Columbia bar all handheld use of phones. But, by and large, the penalties are light.

In Minnesota, for example, drivers caught texting face a $50 fine and $225 for subsequent offenses. When deaths or seriously injuries occur, a distracted driver faces at most a gross misdemeanor reckless driving charge unless engaged in an additional offense such as drunk driving.

That outrages the victim’s father, Tom Goeltz, who has worked for three decades as a safety consultant in Minneapolis.

“When they say, ‘Well, he has to be doing something else like speeding, or being drunk or high on illegal drugs,’ I mean those things by themselves they can get a felony charge for,” Goeltz said in an interview. “You can get a felony charge for cutting down a darn tree on public land. We’re not protecting the public.”

In his job with a risk management firm, Goeltz discusses safety with business owners and employees, and he has added the topic of distracted driving to his lectures.

“I work with nuclear power plants and linemen that put up high tension wires with big utilities, and gas line employees,” Goeltz said. “And the first thing I tell them if I’m in a safety meeting is the most hazardous thing you’re going to do today is not at work, it’s driving back and forth to work.”

“Last year, 5,000 people died in construction sites and general industry and plants, but 40,000 died driving on our roads back and forth to work, school or wherever,” he said. “But we focus so much less on it.”

Some analysts say that fostering peer pressure — particularly among young drivers, who are most at peril – is crucial for putting the brakes on distracted driving.

For drivers who “are very hooked” on their smartphones, “there is no punishment stiff enough to change that behavior,” said Ramsay Brown, co-founder and chief operations officer of Dopamine Labs in Venice, Calif., an artificial intelligence software firm. “You need to find some way to make it cool to get angry at your friend when he’s texting and driving. You need to make distracted driving wickedly unsexy.”

President Barack Obama’s recent executive orders on gun access and control reignited debates over how to rein in gun violence. There’s a perception that gun violence in Iowa is worse than ever. The number of shootings in Iowa’s major cities is increasing, but law enforcement says it’s due to a small number of people.

“Too many people assume that there is some sort of organized gun violence or that there’s an epidemic of gun violence,” said Iowa Department of Public Safety Commissioner Roxann Ryan.

“With each incident, people are assuming that it is someone different. When we talk about local crime, it may be a localized problem. And it may be the same small group of people that are responsible for many of the incidents.”

Dan Trelka, public safety director and police chief in Waterloo, said law enforcement generally knows who is responsible for the gun shots.

“The problem is our information is coming secondhand from individuals,” he said. “It doesn’t give us solid facts to establish probable cause for an arrest.

]]>https://www.iowawatch.org/2016/01/11/iowawatch-connection-podcast-understanding-and-reducing-gun-violence-in-iowa/feed/0IowaWatch Connection Podcast: Gun Violence in Iowahttps://www.iowawatch.org/2015/10/05/iowawatch-connection-podcast-gun-violence-in-iowa/
https://www.iowawatch.org/2015/10/05/iowawatch-connection-podcast-gun-violence-in-iowa/#respondMon, 05 Oct 2015 14:01:48 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=14269The number of shootings in Iowa’s major cities is increasing, but law enforcement says it’s due to a small number of people.

“Too many people assume that there is some sort of organized gun violence or that there’s an epidemic of gun violence,” said Iowa Department of Public Safety Commissioner Roxann Ryan.

“With each incident, people are assuming that it is someone different. When we talk about local crime, it may be a localized problem. And it may be the same small group of people that are responsible for many of the incidents.”

She said it is important for law enforcement agencies to understand the context, including motivation, in order to address gun violence in their communities.

Dan Trelka, public safety director and police chief in Waterloo, said law enforcement generally knows who is responsible for the gun shots. He said they attributed the roughly 100 shootings in the city last year to about 30 people.

“The problem is our information is coming secondhand from individuals,” he said. “It doesn’t give us solid facts to establish probable cause for an arrest.”

Learn more:

]]>https://www.iowawatch.org/2015/10/05/iowawatch-connection-podcast-gun-violence-in-iowa/feed/0News Quiz: Texting While Drivinghttps://www.iowawatch.org/2015/02/20/news-quiz-texting-while-driving/
https://www.iowawatch.org/2015/02/20/news-quiz-texting-while-driving/#respondFri, 20 Feb 2015 12:00:08 +0000http://iowawatch.org/?p=13238Iowa legislators are taking another look at legislation to prohibit cellphone use while driving, in an effort to give more teeth to the current texting law. The bill advanced from an Iowa Senate subcommittee Thursday and will move on to the full committee for consideration. Last year, legislation that proposed making texting while driving a primary offense, meaning law enforcement officials could pull drivers over for texting alone, died in the Iowa House.

Test your knowledge on the current texting law and the bill proposed by the Iowa Department of Public Safety.